The Patriots matched their big shutdown corner Aqib Talib against the Saints big offensive machine Jimmy Graham and Talib won. This was Graham’s first catchless game since his rookie season and to add injury to insult he had to leave the game with a foot injury.

Drew Brees was uncharacteristically error prone on many throws in this game despite not getting much pressure. He completed just 17-of-36 passes, which is less than 50% and Brees has only had a completion percentage of less than 50% four other times in his 176 games played.

After averaging over seven targets per game through the first four, Marques Colston has averaged just 2.5 over the last two. I will be interested to see how they handle him after the bye when they take on Buffalo at home. That would be a great time to get him back involved, but if they don’t, I’m ready to run away.

Peyton Hillis led the Giants in fantasy points on Monday night and I think that’s all you really need to know about that game. Well, that and Hakeem Nicks for some reason continued to get targets even though he couldn’t catch a cold on a 16 hour plane ride with 40 first graders. He had two receptions on 10 targets.

Nick Foles’ inaccuracy and Matt Barkley’s three interceptions are the reason you will see Michael Vick this week. The main fantasy players you’ve used all season will remain the same with McCoy and Jackson being the only two. Zach Ertz and Riley Cooper have flashed some fantasy prowess off and on, but there is no consistency developing. Zach Ertz will have value at some point, but I’m only rostering him in leagues with deep benches.

If Vernon Davis hadn’t have missed a game with a hamstring injury he would be the target leader and really, for all intents and purposes he is. A healthy Davis is a much better player than an older Anquan Boldin. At this point Boldin is just a matchup play.

Frank Gore had been trailing Anthony Dixon in goal line carries until the Jacksonville game where he had four carries inside the five-yard line and scored two touchdowns. Let’s hope that continues.

Golden Tate is now getting consistent targets, but since he isn’t usually a big play receiver, he needs targets closer to the end zone to score. Unfortunately for Tate Marshawn Lynch is the touchdown hog in Seattle. And if you couple that with Percy Harvin being very close to returning to the field, Tate is in trouble.

Tate has just one touchdown on the season while Miller has three on 13 receptions. Like I said, Lynch is the main man. Percy Harvin is going to have trouble scoring touchdowns as well, but as long as his explosiveness is still there he has the ability to make his own touchdowns happen.

The biggest problem for Rams receivers for fantasy this season is that Sam Bradford spread the ball out too much. There has been no go-to receiver and unless you are Drew Brees, Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers, that’s not going to translate into many fantasy players on your team. Now that Bradford is done for the season I suppose there is some small chance that Kellen Clemens or some other free agent scrub could really click with one of the receivers and target him like Mike Glennon targets Vincent Jackson, but that may be asking for too much. As it is the only player worth owning on the Rams is Zac Stacy and he just has flex appeal.

Vincent Jackson is the reason we pay attention to targets. If you have some ability (and VJax has a bunch) and you get a ton of targets, good things will happen. Over the last two weeks Jackson has seen 36 targets. Justin Blackmon is second with 29 and Dez Bryant third with 24. So he’s way ahead of the crowd. And in those two weeks he has caught 19 for 252 yards and four touchdowns.

On the other side of the coin is the rest of the team who are fighting like stray dogs over a hot dog bun. Half of Mike Glennon’s pass attempts went toward Jackson while the other 22 had to be rationed out to eight players. That doesn’t leave much room for fantasy relevancy, but if you are a Jackson owner you are pretty darn happy.

All seven of Vincent Jackson’s red zone targets have come in the last two games and so have all four of his touchdowns. Coincidence? No, it probably isn’t. Mike Williams also had two red zone targets last game, so it’s not like he’s completely been forgotten, but he’s no longer the preferred red zone target like he was when Josh Freeman was quarterbacking.

Jordan Reed had a few week hiatus from his emergence as a fantasy star due to injury, but it was inevitable. His 15 targets over the last two games aren’t huge, but for Washington they rank him second to Garcon who is usually the only guy Robert Griffin actually wants to throw it to. Reed’s emergence should help Garcon out who will still remain the target leader for the team, but will also finally have someone else to take the heat off him.

Roy Helu’s three touchdowns were a bit of a shock to most people, especially Alf Morris owners. Morris was in the game for 41 snaps to Helu’s 35. Helu is the hurry up running back while Morris is the slow it down running back. With Washington’s defense it might be time to pick up Helu.

Garcon is of course the leader her, but Reed did get his two targets last week against Chicago. I may be too high on Reed, but Griffin loves his presence in the middle of the field and Garcon will as well.

Welcome to the NFC targets and touches for Week 8 of the NFL season. The AFC portion will be up tomorrow night, so try to contain your excitement.

This week I’m using just the targets for the last five games so we can stay up to date on the goings on and I’m also adding the total red zone targets over the last five weeks to give a fuller picture of how targets are distributed.

And if you are new to the column let me take you through a quick look at how I set things up. You'll see something like this "Larry Fitzgerald: 6-9-6-12-5 (38)” which just means that Fitzgerald had 6 targets in Week 3, 9 targets in Week 4, 6 in Week 5, 12 in Week 6 and 5 in Week 7 with 38 total. It’s as easy as following me on Twitter.

Editor's Note: Rotoworld's partner FanDuel is hosting a one-week $300,000 Fantasy Football league for Week 8. It's $25 to join and first prize is $25,000. Starts Sunday at 1pm ET. Here's the link.

Below I have all the running backs from both conferences with seven or more carries inside the opponent’s 10-yard line followed by the number of touchdowns they’ve made from those carries.

Over the last five games Floyd and Fitzgerald have had nearly the same amount of targets with Fitzgerald hampered by a hamstring injury. Interestingly Andre Ellington has actually seen the third most targets while Roberts and Housler cancel each other out for the most part. Once Fitzgerald is healthy he should see the bulk of the targets, but Floyd has established himself as a sound target.

Bruce Arians has stayed true to his word about Ellington being a 30-32 snap guy. In each of the last two games he’s had exactly 32 snaps while Rashard Mendenhall has had 23 and 24. That seems like the baseline we can assume going forward, but touches of course will fluctuate.

The Cardinals have played some tough defenses of late and they haven’t spent much time in the red zone. Four players have three targets each over the last five weeks. Floyd’s size is a good fit for the red zone and with his first touchdown of the season coming against San Francisco two weeks ago we may see more of him when they get down there.

Drew Davis was the clear #2 wide receiver, but only had one target, which he did catch for 24 yards. The target distribution will depend a lot on if Roddy White and/or Steven Jackson are able to go in Week 8.

Steve Smith has gotten back on track with a touchdown in each of the last two games, but he’s still not in the elite targeted receivers. The Panthers just don’t throw the ball as much as other teams and since their defense is playing well I doubt they start.

DeAngelo Williams, Mike Tolbert and Cam Newton couldn’t get going against a weak Rams run defense. They rushed 38 times for 102 yards; a pitiful 2.7 yards per carry. That is a commitment to the run.

Mike Tolbert once again took all short yardage looks, which shouldn’t be even close to a surprise. It’s actually kind of nice to be assured that we cannot count on DeAngelo Williams to ever score a touchdown.

Smith is the preferred option for red zone looks, which is why he has scored twice over the last two weeks. Right now that’s what’s saving his fantasy value since he’s not seeing as many overall targets.

Marc Trestman’s offense is allowing multiple fantasy players to have value, but we’ll have to see how Josh McCown leads the offense. Thankfully last week against Washington he came right on and looked good. The target breakdown feels about right with Marshall slightly ahead of Jeffery. Forte is solidly around 5 per game and Bennett gets the biggest fluctuation.

Dez Bryant is targeted like the elite receiver he is, so there’s nothing new to report there. Jason Witten has seen a slight dip in targets with the emergence of Cole Beasley as another underneath target. We’re on a pretty limited sample here so I’m not shooting up the SOS flares just yet, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. Miles Austin has seven targets over the last two games and no receptions while Terrance Williams has nine targets with eight receptions for 98 yards and two touchdowns. Plus it looks like they may be shutting Austin down for a while to get his hamstring back to 100%. It very much looks like Williams is the man going forward.

With DeMarco Murray out Joseph Randle played 45 snaps to Phillip Tanner’s 21 and dominated touches 22 to 3. But if Lance Dunbar can return this week there is no telling how snaps and touches will shake out since Dunbar was the #2 back, but not a type of player projected for a big rushing load.

Oddly enough Terrance Williams has four red zone targets and Cole Beasley has two over the last two games compared to just one for Dez Bryant and zero for Jason Witten. I don’t see that holding true for Bryant by any means, but another sign to keep your eye on for Witten.

Megatron was fully back last week and he dominated targets and statistics. That of course is what he does, but we have seen big target numbers for Kris Durham of late. Of course many of those were related to Calvin Johnson’s injury, but he is no doubt the #2 wide receiver until Nate Burleson returns.

Joseph Fauria has been a touchdown machine this season. He’s seen four red zone targets in the last two games. Last week he saw 40% of the snaps, his highest total of the season. With Tony Scheffler being released he should at least stay in that range and continue to see red zone targets.

Week 7 was the Jarrett Boykin show as he led the team in targets, receptions and yards while also leading in snaps. Myles White was the slot receiver while Boykin played on the outside. Boykin will most likely move back to the slot when James Jones returns, but with Cobb as the most targeted player before he was injured, we know the slot man gets plenty of looks.

Coming into Week 7 Eddie Lacy had four total targets and then in this game he gets seven and catches five. It will be interesting to see if this keeps up when James Jones returns, but regardless it is a good sign that they trust him enough in the passing game.

Boykin led last week in red zone targets with two, but Jones and Nelson will remain big contributors near the goal line. Aaron Rodgers spreads the ball around well and doesn’t stick with one receiver near the end zone.

New Vikings’ quarterback Josh Freeman threw the ball 53 times and completed 20 of those for 190 yards, no touchdowns and one interception. Unfortunately there’s not much information to glean from all of these targets beside the fact Freeman is not an accurate passer.

The Patriots matched their big shutdown corner Aqib Talib against the Saints big offensive machine Jimmy Graham and Talib won. This was Graham’s first catchless game since his rookie season and to add injury to insult he had to leave the game with a foot injury.

Drew Brees was uncharacteristically error prone on many throws in this game despite not getting much pressure. He completed just 17-of-36 passes, which is less than 50% and Brees has only had a completion percentage of less than 50% four other times in his 176 games played.

After averaging over seven targets per game through the first four, Marques Colston has averaged just 2.5 over the last two. I will be interested to see how they handle him after the bye when they take on Buffalo at home. That would be a great time to get him back involved, but if they don’t, I’m ready to run away.

Peyton Hillis led the Giants in fantasy points on Monday night and I think that’s all you really need to know about that game. Well, that and Hakeem Nicks for some reason continued to get targets even though he couldn’t catch a cold on a 16 hour plane ride with 40 first graders. He had two receptions on 10 targets.

Nick Foles’ inaccuracy and Matt Barkley’s three interceptions are the reason you will see Michael Vick this week. The main fantasy players you’ve used all season will remain the same with McCoy and Jackson being the only two. Zach Ertz and Riley Cooper have flashed some fantasy prowess off and on, but there is no consistency developing. Zach Ertz will have value at some point, but I’m only rostering him in leagues with deep benches.

If Vernon Davis hadn’t have missed a game with a hamstring injury he would be the target leader and really, for all intents and purposes he is. A healthy Davis is a much better player than an older Anquan Boldin. At this point Boldin is just a matchup play.

Frank Gore had been trailing Anthony Dixon in goal line carries until the Jacksonville game where he had four carries inside the five-yard line and scored two touchdowns. Let’s hope that continues.

Golden Tate is now getting consistent targets, but since he isn’t usually a big play receiver, he needs targets closer to the end zone to score. Unfortunately for Tate Marshawn Lynch is the touchdown hog in Seattle. And if you couple that with Percy Harvin being very close to returning to the field, Tate is in trouble.

Tate has just one touchdown on the season while Miller has three on 13 receptions. Like I said, Lynch is the main man. Percy Harvin is going to have trouble scoring touchdowns as well, but as long as his explosiveness is still there he has the ability to make his own touchdowns happen.

The biggest problem for Rams receivers for fantasy this season is that Sam Bradford spread the ball out too much. There has been no go-to receiver and unless you are Drew Brees, Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers, that’s not going to translate into many fantasy players on your team. Now that Bradford is done for the season I suppose there is some small chance that Kellen Clemens or some other free agent scrub could really click with one of the receivers and target him like Mike Glennon targets Vincent Jackson, but that may be asking for too much. As it is the only player worth owning on the Rams is Zac Stacy and he just has flex appeal.

Vincent Jackson is the reason we pay attention to targets. If you have some ability (and VJax has a bunch) and you get a ton of targets, good things will happen. Over the last two weeks Jackson has seen 36 targets. Justin Blackmon is second with 29 and Dez Bryant third with 24. So he’s way ahead of the crowd. And in those two weeks he has caught 19 for 252 yards and four touchdowns.

On the other side of the coin is the rest of the team who are fighting like stray dogs over a hot dog bun. Half of Mike Glennon’s pass attempts went toward Jackson while the other 22 had to be rationed out to eight players. That doesn’t leave much room for fantasy relevancy, but if you are a Jackson owner you are pretty darn happy.

All seven of Vincent Jackson’s red zone targets have come in the last two games and so have all four of his touchdowns. Coincidence? No, it probably isn’t. Mike Williams also had two red zone targets last game, so it’s not like he’s completely been forgotten, but he’s no longer the preferred red zone target like he was when Josh Freeman was quarterbacking.

Jordan Reed had a few week hiatus from his emergence as a fantasy star due to injury, but it was inevitable. His 15 targets over the last two games aren’t huge, but for Washington they rank him second to Garcon who is usually the only guy Robert Griffin actually wants to throw it to. Reed’s emergence should help Garcon out who will still remain the target leader for the team, but will also finally have someone else to take the heat off him.

Roy Helu’s three touchdowns were a bit of a shock to most people, especially Alf Morris owners. Morris was in the game for 41 snaps to Helu’s 35. Helu is the hurry up running back while Morris is the slow it down running back. With Washington’s defense it might be time to pick up Helu.

Garcon is of course the leader her, but Reed did get his two targets last week against Chicago. I may be too high on Reed, but Griffin loves his presence in the middle of the field and Garcon will as well.